Can land transfer through land cooperatives foster off-farm employment in China?

Ziming Liu, Jens Rommel, Shuyi Feng and Markus Hanisch

China Economic Review, 2017, vol. 45, issue C, 35-44

Abstract: Functioning land markets are necessary for an increase in off-farm employment. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the impact of land transfer on off-farm employment in rural China. This paper investigates the drivers of households' cooperative membership, which is equivalent to transferring land through land cooperatives, and its impact on off-farm employment. Using a two-step control function approach and data from Suzhou and Yangzhou (Jiangsu province), we do not find a general effect of cooperative membership on household heads' current off-farm employment, though the effect is large for households which had surplus agricultural labor before cooperative initiation. The effect is also positive and large for household heads without off-farm experience and households located in Yangzhou. Policy-makers should be aware of the distributional consequences of these heterogeneous effects.

Keywords: Land market; Labor market; Land cooperative; Control function; Jiangsu (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:45:y:2017:i:c:p:35-44

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2017.06.002

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